Yummy Fur (comics) - Overview

Overview

Yummy Fur came at a time when alternative comics was still young, and is considered one of its defining titles. It was one of the earliest examples of a comic that would have its first success as a self-published mini. It started in an era when comic books and their characters were generally considered to be ongoing, and finished when the self-contained stories of the graphic novel had begun to come into prominence. Brown's ambitions changed in step, Yummy Fur started with Ed the Happy Clown, which Brown originally didn't intend to have an ending; towards the end, he serialized two works, The Playboy and I Never Liked You, which were conceived from the start as self-complete works. Brown would thereafter make the production of graphic novels the main focus of his output.

Yummy Fur quickly gained a reputation for taboo-breaking—Ed the Happy Clown's plot revolved around a character who couldn't stop defecating, and whose anus was a gateway to another dimension; then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan's head attached to the end of the protagonist's penis; and a beautiful female vampire, who is out to get revenge on the boyfriend who murdered her, and who usually appears entirely naked. Later, in The Playboy, Brown would detail his adolescent obsession with the Playboy Playmates in Playboy magazine, including explicit scenes of his teenage self masturbating and ejaculating. In the short "Danny's Story", Brown had himself picking his nose, and finished with him biting his neighbour. The book was often wrapped in plastic with an "adults only" label on it, although it is not known if Yummy Fur were ever banned from any comic shop.

The edgy content of the book was contrasted with his straight adaptations of the Gospels which appeared in most issues of Yummy Fur—albeit, adaptations that took a "warts and all" approach, in which characters pick their noses and Jesus is going bald.

Yummy Fur had been a catch-all title for Brown's work, but since bringing the series to an end in 1994, he has published new stories, like Underwater and Louis Riel, under their own titles. Much of the work from the series has been republished in book form—the short work in The Little Man—but the Gospel stories and most of the later instalments of Ed the Happy Clown remain uncollected.